Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[William F. Owen]

It's not really about Anthro, or Social Science. It's about filling in the blanks that the Intel community has discarded in their "taxonomizing" and "Taylorizing" of Intel by applying scientific/academic rigor to qualitative data versus quantitative data.

Concur. Intelligence work done well does not need "Human Terrain" or Anthropologists. Some thing done badly needs to be done well, not done a different way.

[Steve the Planner]

Your use of the term "taylorizing" is particularly significant.

In grad school (many moons ago), I was addressing the weaknesses of "Industrial Policy" delusions while routinely taking the Amtrack through the wasteland of Taylor's early 20th C. industrial paradigm, south of Philadelphia.

My sad impression of HT comes from 2001 when it appeared that they were, as you said, trying to reconstruct complex "systems dynamics" causal loop diagrams into "on/off" switches to drive the public/civilian side of the equation, with predictable failed results.

Ultimately, it comes down to relevant intelligence---useful wisdom and understanding---played out on a reiterative basis on a dynamic and interactive field.

The social, physical and cultural sciences play a role---a role.

What always impressed me in Gertrude Bell's original source works was her acute eye and understanding of political, administrative, geographic, economic, physical and force details (within the limits of the knowable to a Brit trekster at that time), and had little to do with anthropology. She was a cunning Intel operative.

Steve